Sunday, August 10, 1919

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A good day. Jim fired
tobacco all day. Quit at night.
Has cured two houses of primings.
Edwin staid here all day.
Paul Bennett & Loney come
a little while this morning.
Paul got his hair cut
this evening. Ben and
family went to Jim Powers
and Rob Hubards.

I milked & got supper
and Jim, Edwin, and I
eat before they got home.
I have not heard from
Marvins to day.

Edwin finished reading
Philo Gubb to day &
slept two hours.

I read some in the land
mark & [?].

10:30 oclock

Notes and Questions

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Ben W. Brumfield

Land Mark and "noded"? Land Mark and Model? Research might help us find a publication called something like this.

Neil

...read some in the land mark and nodded? Is there a Lonnie Bennett in the tree, I suspect the correct spelling would have been that.

Neil

houses of primings - house is the same as barn, some people refered to filling a barn with tobacco as "housing". Priming may have refered to the quality of the leaf and probably derived from prime although priming a pump would have meant the first or lowest leaves - check John or Wayne.

Ben W. Brumfield

I'm pretty sure that primings in this case would be the first pulling of tobacco. If I recall correctly, Nannie May Tilley's _The Bright Tobacco Industry: 1854-1929_ describes the modern practice of pulling leaves off the plant in progressive pullings as having its origins in pulling the bottom leaves off the plant as they ripened, back when the entire plant was cut at harvest. Under that system, you'd pull primings, then later cut the tobacco plants.

Ben W. Brumfield

I've just looked at Tilley. According to her, curing the bottom leaves separately, while cutting and curing the rest of the plant on the stalk continued in the Old Belt at least through 1927, starting in the last decades of the 19th century. "Prime" refers to "first", not "best" in this case.